


I would make you a constellation

by Sand_Cursive



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: And sometimes you just want to be sad somewhere beautiful you know, Friendship, Gen, Hunk is just a little bit melancholy, but also on the planet you helped save, interpret it how you want honestly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-12
Updated: 2016-09-12
Packaged: 2018-08-14 14:34:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8017708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sand_Cursive/pseuds/Sand_Cursive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hunk is feeling homesick, and Shay is glad to see a familiar face. </p><p>Also, talking about stars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I would make you a constellation

She found him on the back of his strange, yellow metal beast. It had taken her nearly three hours to locate him — he’d been lying down, back flush against the cold outer casing. The only reason she’d been able to spot him at all was the telltale whip of his yellow cloth headband, a miniscule flag against the backdrop of the night sky.

“Hunk?” She called, her voice too quiet to carry. She picked a stone off the surface of her beautiful, glittering planet, and hurled it skyward with all the force she could manage.

“OW! What the heck was that?”

“Hunk?” She tried again, and this time she was rewarded with the soft sounds of wild scrambling as he turned, crawling over to the edge of the giant beast-ship. His face rose over the side, just as beautiful as any sunrise she’d yet seen. It brought a smile to her face, breaking wide and warm as a new day.

“Shay?”

“Hunk!” she exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”

“Just a — wait just a second, I’ll be right down. Don’t move!” He disappeared over the edge, and she heard the frantic sounds of slipping and grabbing as he tried to lower himself down. She grabbed a cold metal edge on the beast, (pausing first to ensure that it was alright, of course, with the strange creature; it didn’t move, and so she took that as consent), before pulling herself up, nimbly, quickly, so used to scaling sheer walls and strange paths that she was at the top before Hunk had fully managed to find a way down.

“Hunk?” She put a hand on collar at the back of his neck, pulling him bodily back onto the sheer, flat surface of his beast-ship’s back. “What are you doing here?”

He panted, flopping back dramatically. “Nothing. Or I mean, I’m not here for any specific reason I just. Wanted to see how the Balmera was doing. And how you guys were, I guess.” He paused, hand pushing his bangs out of his eyes. “Wait, how did you know I was here?”

“The Balmera told me, of course.” She cocked her head to the side, watching him silently.

“Right, yes, of course. Good old Balmera.” He patted his beast absently, apparently waiting for it to transfer his feelings to the majestic beast. He seemed to hold it in very high regard, so she was sure the message had been conveyed. She couldn’t hear the Balmera from here.

“How are you?”

“What? What do you mean?” He looked at her skeptically, bangs already inching their way back into the most inconvenient of positions.

“How have you been, since last we met? How are the other paladins? How is the Princess? How is the other one - with the curly face hairs and the great respect for the Balmera? Coran?” She shifted to sit beside him, her legs tucked demurely under her.

“Oh. Oh, that. Them. We’re good, I guess. Been training a lot. Fighting the Galra, you know, the usual. We’re getting better at it, I think, we’re definitely getting captured less, which is a bonus. Allura’s great, she’s pretty much an awesome commander or whatever equivalent position I guess she holds. Coran is doing great. I mean, I think he’s kind of mad at me for kicking him out of the kitchen but otherwise he’s more or less the same. He’s gonna be so stoked you asked about him though. I’ll let him know the Balmera’s doing great.”

“Stoked?”

“Oh. Yeah, that’s another word for happy, where I’m from.”

“And how is that?”

“Hmm? How’s what?” His eyes were already drifting away, tracing stars in the bright night sky.

“How is ‘where you’re from’?” She asked, lowering herself to her elbows.

“Earth.”

“What?”

“Where I’m from. It’s called Earth.” He closed his eyes, then, screwed them shut as though he were trying to keep them still in his head.

“Earth.” She said it slowly, trying to remember it. “Earth. And how is Earth?”

He sighed, pushing the palms of his hands to his face. Apparently his lids were not hardy enough. “I don’t know.”

“But is that not where you went when you left? Home?”

“No, we just went back to the ship. I haven’t been home . . . in a really long time.”

She watched the planes of his face, the strange sharpness that had arisen in the months since she’d seen him last. There was a discoloration on his face, just under the edges of his suit, disappearing into places she couldn’t see. New scars, new bruises. And a new hardness, living at the corners — around his mouth, his eyes, the posture of his back, the set of his hands.

She couldn’t even imagine leaving the Balmera.

She dropped to her back, mirroring his position. The beast-ship echoed beneath her, and she flinched in apology. That was inconsiderate.

“What do you know about the sky?”

“What?” He turned, looking her full in the face, and suddenly he was just as she remembered. His eyes were as warm and soft as they had always been.

“All these tiny lights, all these stars! It is the first time the Balmerians have ever been able to see them since the Galra set up the mines. No one remembers them. For the Balmerians that live here now, there was never a time before the Galra. Only after.” She paused, soaking in the majesty of the tapestry above her. “I wonder if these stars are different from the ones the Balmera remembers.”

He was silent for a minute. “So I guess this means you guys don’t know any constellations, then.”

She turned to him. “What are constellations?”

“They’re like, stories that people tell using stars.”

“You can tell stories with the stars? The stars have stories?”

He turned back to the sky, brow furrowed again but with less intensity. “Yeah, kinda. I mean, it’s not really stories _about_ the stars so much as stories that you make up using the shapes that the stars make.”

She frowned, staring back up at the sky. “But aren’t stars all the same shape?”

“No, that’s not what I mean. Let’s see here, uhh,” and here he shot a hand up to the sky, finger extended. “Look at that star, the one I’m pointing at. Do you see the lines it makes with these other stars?’

She shifted over, trying to maneuver her head as close to his as possible and ending up nearly perpendicular. Her large eyes followed the movement of his finger as he traced a pattern in the sky. “Yes, I think so.”

“Well, did you see the shape I made?” He traced the pattern out again, more slowly this time. “See, that’s the head part, and those lines there, those would be your large, dangly hoop accessories, and those stars in there are your eyes. That little line at the bottom is your mouth. Kinda.”

“It’s me?” She exclaimed, pleased and utterly confused. “But how could I be in the stars? What a strange design.”

“You’re not _in_ the stars. I mean, not literally? I’m just making that shape in the sky so I can remember where the stars are. And I like it.”

She smiled, sure he couldn’t see it, and lay a hand on his still extended forearm. “Thank you. My very own constellation.”

“The Shay constellation,” he agreed solemnly.

“Ah, but what is the story?”

“Story?”

“You said that constellations were stories about the star shapes.”

“Right. Okay, so, this constellation is about the brave Balmerian Shay, a hero to her people,” he began, voice going all low and dramatic.

“Oh,” she said, voice dropping. “So it isn’t about me.”

“No it’s you, shush, I’m still telling the story. So Shay, this great hero, was a Balmerian who was enslaved by the Galra, to work in their incredibly unethical mines. See, the Galra were this race of like, evil purple aliens that were trying to take over the universe, and they needed power. So they set up shop on this majestic Balmera planet-creature and began mining it empty so they would have the energy they needed to power their ships. And they were killing this planet, and therefore dooming its people, but the Galra are huge wads —”

“What is a ‘wad’?”

“It’s a terrible evil person, please stop interrupting. So the Galra are huge wads who —”

“It would be easier not to interrupt if you didn’t use such alien terms.”

“Okay, okay fine, no you’re right, sorry. The Galra are huge wads (meaning terrible evil disgusting people)—”

“It’s true,” she interjected solemly, “they were disgusting. They left their machines and garbage everywhere, and they had this one cave where they just piled up broken parts and sentries and left them to rust.”

“Wow. That is actually awful and terrible and a very valuable contribution to the story, thank you Shay. Now as I was saying, the Galra are the worst so they didn’t care about the damage they were doing to this planet and its people, so they just kept right on doing it. But one day, a shuttle with two handsome aliens on it crashed on the Balmera after being surprised by the Galra forces on the planet’s surface.

Now, they would have been doomed after this crash, but they were found by a brave Balmerian and her brother, who helped them hide from the Galra forces. And despite the reservations of her brother, the Balmerian helped the aliens escape with a battleship class crystal, defying the Galra and ending up trapped and betrayed by her brother for her bravery.”

“That’s not fair,” she said. “He was just afraid for me. He has a great sense of duty towards our family.”

“No yes, he gets redeemed later in the story, just wait until the end. So the aliens left with their crystal, and Shay was trapped. But, she had traded her already limited freedom for something important. She had traded it for a chance for her people and her planet. She had traded it for hope.

It took a little while, but the aliens came back, and they brought their friends. They descended on the planet and rescued as many Balmerians in trouble as they could, including Shay, who had been captured by the Galra and used as bait for these brave strangers. She warned them of the trap, and helped coordinate a rescue by communicating with the Balmera. So the aliens managed to make it out. _And_ it turned out, the aliens were paladins of Voltron, so Voltron came and helped them beat back the Galra. At first, it—”

“But you told me before you left the first time that you were a paladin of Voltron.”

“Yes, okay, but saying it this way makes the story more dramatic.”

“Doesn’t it make me seem a bit irresponsible? As if I had just assisted you against my Galra masters with no idea of how much you could help us. It might have been for nothing.”

“No, I mean, it makes you seem kind because you were helping out these aliens who were down on their luck, you know? Just generally being a good person.”

“But weighed against the well-being of my entire people and the Balmera? Does that not seem callous?”

“ . . . Maybe. You know, we can workshop that part later, okay? Where was I? Right, anyway, at first it seemed like no matter what they did, the Balmera would be doomed. The planet was dying and the fight for the freedom of the Balmera and her people was damaging the creature itself. But then, the great Princess of Altea came down from the sky, ready to help shuttle the people to safety. While met with initial fear, Shay’s brother stepped up, helping with not only the resistance against the Galra but in convincing the Balmerians to seize their chance at life and family. As they were preparing the mass exodus, the planet began to fall apart. All hope seemed lost, until a wise old Balmerian told the princess of the power she possesed, and that she could perform a ritual to save the planet. And so she did, at great personal cost to her health. But the planet was healed, and the Balmerians saved, (and the princess eventually made a very full recovery). Shay had found freedom for her people.”

She was silent for a long moment, letting Hunk’s fading words sink themselves deep into her skin. “The Shay of your story is quite a striking figure.” She paused, clutching her hands together over her abdomen. “I am not sure I can live up to it.”

The laughter was unexpected. But it was easy, not unkind, and she found she didn’t quite mind the strange reaction that her friend was having. “Why are you laughing?”

“No, it’s nothing bad, I just. You’ve already lived up to it, Shay. I mean, you lived it, that was your literal story. I just put some of the more abstract parts into words.”

His response was so earnest she wasn’t quite sure how to respond. “So,” she said instead, flustered and suddenly ready to change the subject, “why do you make constellations?”

“To remember the position of the stars. See, you can navigate a planet using your position in relation to the stars at night.”

“Why would I need to do that?”

He sighed, a little gust of a laugh. “Right, right, you guys can literally just ask your planet. Well, I mean, I guess you can do it for fun? Nobody on Earth really needs to use the stars anymore to navigate.”

No matter where she put her hands, she couldn’t quite feel the life force of the metal beast beneath her. “Do you miss it?”

“. . . Yeah.”

She didn’t turn to look at him, cautious of the intimacy of the dawning conversation. “I could never imagine living without the Balmera beneath me. To not see it, not feel its life force with my hands. I am afraid of the silence and the emptiness that would mean. Even with my family around me.”

“It’s not exactly the same. I think. I think I could tolerate it better if . . . if my family were with me. And, you know, the other people that I care about. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’d still miss Earth. I grew up there.”

She nodded, even knowing he can’t see it. “Yes. It is familiar and safe.”

“Yeah. But we’re just. So alone. I mean, the rest of the paladins are out here, and Allura and Coran, but it’s just us floating out there in the universe, up against an unimaginable enemy. I mean, I don’t have to imagine them, we’ve actually seen them, and Zarkon, too, in the flesh! But the scope of what we’re up against — it’s massive.”

“And you feel small. And lost.”

“Yeah.” There was a shifting behind her, and she very consciously didn’t turn to look. “Will you tell me about them?”

“About Earth? Or my family? Or . . .”

“Whatever you want to share. If you want to.”

The silence stretched out, and suddenly she could feel the sky pressing down on her, the whole, sparkling vastness of it, and she was struck by a sudden feeling of loneliness. Not for herself, down here on her beloved Balmera, but for those wandering in the deepest blackness of it, adrift and miniscule against the infinity of the universe. There was a sudden tightness in the palms of her hands that she didn’t understand.

“Earth is bigger than your Balmera. And it’s not the same all over. Different regions of the planet have different climates depending on their relation to the axis of the planet’s orbit. In some places, water freezes into a crystalline structure and falls from the sky. In some places, sand sweeps over the entire surface of the horizon, so deep you don’t know how far you have to go to hit solid ground. But the place I lived in was bright and warm. It was on the side of the planet that got the most sun, and even if the ground was yellowed and a little dry, you could see for miles. Rock formations jut out of the ground in mountains, just beautifully coloured against the sunset. Or the sunrise, I guess, if you could wake up early enough for it. And my family—” His words cut off abruptly, breathing changing. She could sense the distress, and pretended not to see as his hands went again to adjust his face. She didn’t interrupt, this time.

When he was silent for too long, though, she peered over. His eyes were glistening strangely, reflecting the starlight too brightly. She lifted an arm and pointed to the sky, drawing shaky lines with her fingertip. “I am making my own constellation,” she said into the broken silence. “See, here is the line of the head, and this is the yellow head cloth, and here are the eyes. And the mouth.” She couldn’t see if he was looking, but she kept going.

“This is the Hunk constellation. And this constellation has a very heroic story . . .”

 


End file.
